The collective unconscious of the conservative, hegemonic North, to paraphrase Carl Jung, is to collectively destroy the chances of President Goodluck Jonathan’s victory in next year presidential poll. Its core leading light in the ugly mould of Adamu Ciroma, Bukola Saraki (wannabe Northerner) Abubakar Atiku, Ibrahim Babangida, Aliyu Gusau and Lawan Kaita have all imported emotional politics of clannish chutzpah into an already combustible political atmosphere. In an environment charged with unrestrained oratorical vituperations, tribal threats, warring signal and aggression which segue into implacability, then the prophetism of Professor Wole Soyinka on Nigeria’s disintegration come next year, may find expression of reality and self-fulfillment.
Emotional politics currently being projected into the public domain by few Northern cabal has once again exposed the North’s antipathy toward the Southerners. It has further exposed the innate, juvenile and caustic interpretation of Hausa/Fulani divine desire for the soul of this embattled nation. Their years at the pyramid of this nation’s upward political transition from the military to civilian has been misinterpreted and selfishly purloined as private fiefdom. The ideological close-mindedness of a personality like Adamu Ciroma and Lawan Kaita fit perfectly into the long festering hostility between North and South that have cleave this nation into a cesspit of warring tribes and classes. This antipodal co-existence foisted through forced unity often exposed the fundamental fraud and lies concocted by past Northern rulers to hold Nigeria together for distinct Northern advantage.
The oneness or unity of Nigeria is often predicated on the fleeting whim and caprice of Northern cabal who decide who rule who. The whim and caprice then morph into whimper as we have seen in the attitude of Ciroma, Kaita, et al, when a south-southerner becomes the driver of this nation’s destiny. Beyond the sophistry of our unity and the sophisticated dishonesty of our oneness, lies a huge political lesson for Jonathan to learn and learn quite fast. The Northern collective assault, ridicule and hostility against Jonathan and his presidency enjoins him, if for political expediency, to garrison his public enemies and stem the rising tsunami of Northern tribal tensions and their metaphysical projection to make the North ungovernable. There lies the facile notion of the North’s obsessive desire to one and indivisible Nigeria.
The homogeneity of Nigeria is sacrosanct when Hausa/Fulani is the leader and the same nation becomes less united when fortune smiles southward as in the case of Jonathan. The Northern animus against Jonathan goes far beyond the ugly bickering over the tweaking of PDP’s zoning arrangement. In our natural world, defined more by selfishness than selflessness and where truth is considered constant and relative, if a Yoruba man were to be the president and Hausa/Fulani the vice and death took away the president, what then happens?
Assuming the Yoruba president still has years to cruise around the opulent surroundings of Aso Rock but death struck. Will the Hausa/Fulani vice-president-turned-president respect an agreed zoning and step down after years of tasting wine of affluence and power? No sir! The option for the Yoruba is to sulk into tribal sentiment by coughing out curses, raining down fire and brimstones, haranguing the North for insensitivity, lobbying grenades and sorties but at the end of all the noisome pestilence, the Northern president will remain unstuck as in the case of lucky Jonathan.
Jonathan’s public antagonists like Ciroma, Atiku, Babangida, Saraki and Kaita do not want to be ruled by such a spineless, minority like Jonathan. The subtext of all the brouhaha is loud enough. The North is still a bullying, arrogant, domineering and implacable enemy of the South when it comes to who really owns Nigeria? How do we then tame such dominating instincts? A victorious Jonathan in next year poll should ‘shine’ his eyes and go straight for the jugular of the Northern political elite. The feared demon of most Northern political elite is the articulation and convocation of a Sovereign National Conference. Jonathan has to act like a stentorian headmaster and teach the North an unforgettable lesson in political sophistication or vendetta and organize a sovereign conference of all competing nationalities of this ridiculed entity called Nigeria.
However, Jonathan is a weak and spineless leader who enjoys the dishonour and insults being poured on him by his Northern enemies. At the 16th Nigerian Economic Summit last month, Jonathan made a public tomfoolery of his presidency and announced that this embattled nation had gone beyond the call for the SNC and instead we should build a prosperous nation. His public denial of SNC hinges on a fatalistic fantasy to win the votes of the Northerners who are the vehement opponents of SNC and his implacable foes.
MEND and other emancipated and ‘amnestied’ fighters of the creek struggle are enthusiastic supporters of SNC that would have guaranteed a true federalism and free the southern Nigerians from a very powerful and mighty federal government that caters more for the interests of the North than the South. Without SNC, it is guaranteed that Jonathan will be the first and last minority to rule this nation. Jonathan’s cautious and timid political orthodoxy is enough for us all to reject him at the poll next year. Once again, hey Jonathan, the trick to taming the North is in the SNC!
